Does Jesus actually want us to 'hate' our family members?

Christ tells us the cost of discipleship: not only must we carry our cross, but we must 'hate' father, mother, wife and children—even our own life. But what did he mean?​

Editor’s Notes
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This is the last part of the chapter which deals with the episodes read at Mass on the Second and Sixteenth Sunday after Pentecost. It deals with the challenging words of Christ:

“If any man come to Me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea, and his own life also, he cannot be My disciple.”

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Was Christ really saying, in this Gospel episode, that we must actually hate our family members?

No, he was not – nor is this how the Church has understood it.

The fourth commandment requires us to honour our parents, and the idea that Christ enjoined a violation of this commandment is as unthinkable as him enjoining a violation of the first commandment, or the fifth, sixth, or any other.

Further, we have natural duties of love and piety towards those who are closest to us in the so-called “ordo amoris.” We also have many examples of the saints who did indeed love their family members.

However, there is an important lesson to be learnt here. Fr Coleridge explains what Christ’s teaching meant, and how it has been understood by his Church ever since.

For more context on this section, and its place in the Gospel and the Liturgy, see Part I.

Continued below.